Olympic Industry Resistance: Challenging Olympic Power and Propaganda (Sport Culture Social Relations)

A critical look at the Olympics in the postbribery, post-9/11 era, particularly at consequences for host cities and so-called “Olympic education” for schoolchildren.

Scholar and activist Helen Jefferson Lenskyj continues her critique of the Olympic industry, looking specifically at developments in the post-9/11 and postbribery scandal era. Examining events and activism in host cities, as well as in several locations that bid unsuccessfully on the Olympics, Lenskyj shows how basic rights and freedoms, particularly of the press and of assembly, are compromised. Lenskyj investigates the pro-Olympic bias in media treatment of bids and preparations, the “fallen hero” phenomenon that includes doping and female athletes who pose nude in calendars, and takes issue with “Olympic education” curricular materials for schoolchildren. Also discussed are the problems of housing and homelessness created when the Olympics become a catalyst for urban redevelopment projects.